The first track, "GENESIS", is well under way! (3 April 2026)
Cover image generated (except text) using Apple Intelligence's Image Playground.
Hi! The name's Steven Buehler, and I grew up surrounded by inspiration from so many things—the world around me, the creativity and fantasy of others, and my personal Christian faith.
Just a little over thirty years ago, I was a worship musician, composer, arranger, and performer on the keys and guitar in Southern California. Back then I self-released a pair of projects, simply titled "Red" and "White", of the material I had composed over that time on what would now be considered a rather crude setup—a PC with a wavetable card, a busted-up Akai X-7000 as a MIDI controller…
Fast forward to the early mid-2000s, now living in Florida, and life came apart at the seams. Some of it was my own doing in the form of addiction and the taking of many things for granted; the rest came from being diagnosed as an adult with Type I Autism. Not to mention over that time there was the fallout from those aforementioned issues—layoffs, divorce, bankruptcy, marrying again (this time to my jr. high crush), and then becoming a widower by the late-2010s.
When I was diagnosed, I chose the route of treatment with antipsychotic medication. Not that there's anything wrong with that; it's just that I only learned twenty years later, after long-term health issues required me to wean off of it (with significant difficulty), how much I had missed, how much I could've done and been. There's now this massive flood of twenty-plus years of pent-up emotion, passion, inspiration, and creativity in desperate need of an outlet.
Out of that comes this self-produced project that I hope to complete and have released to the world by the end of 2026, followed potentially by additional projects thereafter. TSOS is primarily instrumental, synth-based, and across multiple genres—ambient, smooth jazz, orchestral metal, EDM. The name comes from the things that inspire me, all of which mean looking UP, including but not limited to whether it's to the heavens, the stars, the world around us, Disney fantasy, and the need to look to something (someone?) much greater than we are. It also reflects the academic curiosity with which I've always approached life—"be curious, not judgmental" (incidentally, never actually stated by Walt Whitman contrary to a certain TV show…).
3 April 2026:
Public Notice to be published on April 8, 2026 in the Leesburg Daily Commercial of intent to register "THE STUDY OF STARLIGHT" with the State of Florida as a fictitious name for "d/b/a" purposes. This provides some protection should another person or band try to use the name, as it provides official proof of when I began using it.
I started working on the first track for the project this past week, and it's taken a different course than I thought it would. The working title of the opening track was "In Wonder"; now it will be entitled "GENESIS", as the beginning of things, the creation of light, the sun, the moon, and the stars as sounds layer upon each other at each stage.
As part of my work on GENESIS. I want to include a voice-over of parts of the first chapter in the track, and I recently acquired an original 16⅔-rpm vinyl record copy of the KJV Old Testament read by Alexander Scourby ("the voice of the Bible") for the American Foundation for the Blind and the American Bible Society that he recorded in the early 1950s. Currently trying to follow up with the American Bible Society as to who owns the copyright on the recording (them or the money-grubbers at Litchfield Associates, who claim to have acquired all of Scourby's intellectual property in 1991 from his estate). If all else fails, I guess I'll voice it over myself, or figure something else out.
Yamaha PSR-EW400 Portable Keyboard Workstation
Yamaha SLG-200S SILENT Guitar
Akai Professional MPK mini Mk. IV controller
Apple MacBook Pro 13" (M5, 24 GB, 1 TB)
Apple iPad Pro 13" (M5, 256GB, Wi-Fi/5G)
Software: Apple Creative Studio (incl. Logic Pro & MainStage), GarageBand, AmpliTube, Akai Studio Instrument Collection, TONEX
Maranatha! Colours • Enya • Eden's Bridge • Yanni • Mylène Farmer/Laurent Boutonnat • Red • Starset • Believer
Facebook • Instagram • Threads • YouTube • Twitch • SoundCloud (the "old stuff")